


This House, These Woods (An Empty Home That's Filled With Goods)

by StorytellerSecrets



Category: Original Work
Genre: A Lot Of Things In This World Are Sentient, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Except not alternate-universe because this is an original story, Fae & Fairies, Gen, I don't know but I did it to myself, Magical Realism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, They Are Not Often Treated As Such, This Is Fine, Werewolves, Why am I getting angry about the feelings of wood and glass?, sentient house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24818680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StorytellerSecrets/pseuds/StorytellerSecrets
Summary: [Write a 600 word story in the magical realism genre. It's about a werewolf and should include an oven. Also use the sentence 'I don't want to ask for too much.' Bonus prompt: Your character is loved by everyone.]Akallie has the face of a bear embroidered in silver floss on her favorite sweater. Her mug, an impressive work of metallurgy with an ornate handle that’d taken Skull ages to contend, sits on a Walnut counter and is brimming with an exotic blend of coffee and carefree happiness. The counter warbles a song of agreement.She lives in a nowhere mountain town with more local deer than people. Her house has four bedrooms and all of them are filled. Akallie is happy.Or: Life is a journey, but somehow it's everyone else that's doing the traveling.
Kudos: 2





	1. Shutters Must Snarl, Glass Must Scream, This Is The Way It'll Always Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first to come is Breena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I used the writing prompt generator https://thestoryshack.com/tools/writing-prompt-generator/ and got the beggining of the summary as my prompt. Technically, I'm following it, but rather than JUST 600 words it'll be 600 words a chapter. There should be six chapters, but I may be wrong because I'm horrible with spacing.

The first to come is Breena.

It’s raining, a violent torrent of whipsnake wind and water that tumbles onto roof and exterior wall with pinpricks of sound. Four of six shutters are snapped closed. The other two are playing a game of who can bang their respective window frames the loudest, and Akallie is confident the windows are the only ones not enjoying it. Akallie waits as long as she reasonably can before she gets up to close the kitchen’s shutters. The shutters like their games and will snarl and bark after they’re closed, but they know better than to rankle the vitriol of glass. Wood, as it is, is naturally more yielding than the manufactured particleboard that makes the shutters, but even the most reckless know better than to sparke ire in fireborne materials.

She opens the first window with a grunt, edges catching before easing their way open. The downpour smacks her face, rivulets sliding down like tiny tears as she catches the corner of a swinging board, pulling it forward and locking it into place. It growls before the glass lets out a note of warning, a quiet sound that comes out in a jagged, melted tongue. Glass has made this noise before, surely it means _something_ , but to Akallie it sounds like static. To Akallie, everything glass says is static.

The shutter quiets fast, and its twin lets itself be stilled with a half-reflexive whine. It has learned, or perhaps it was made with the knowledge, that glass does not repeat itself. If you do not listen, it will bite as was bitten. Glass isn’t afraid to break, and it wants to break you.

The other window puts up a fight. It doesn’t want to open right now, it’s clear, and it doesn’t want the shutters locked down next to it. This window is never okay with being opened, and Akallie would fault the thick crack through its middle if it hadn’t been this way before. No, this window is prickly, more than its room-friend, more likely to leave you bleeding and wondering how it cut you than to listen. Akallie tries for a few more tugs before she steps away and moves to go outside.

It’s a pain that she goes through every time the shutters need to be closed, and the practical answer would simply be to replace the window, but the window tolerates Akallie well enough that she knows it likes its place. Besides, despite its crack it has never let water in, and the shutters with it never seem unhappy. To take the window away from its home may be practical, but Akallie didn’t move to a place in the middle of the woods for practical reasons, and she’s not going to start acting like it now.

The door slides open with a _be back soon_ and she slips out, barefoot and dressed in pajamas. She’s soaked in seconds. She walks the perimeter of the house briskly as water seeps into her clothes. Quickly, the water and cotton make friends, hums of content and cheerful conversation released into the turbulent wind. Akallie is rolling her eyes by the time she reaches the window. If it were that easy to make friends with people, she would be the queen.

Mid-eyeroll, she stops. Her hands fall from their hold on the shutters. The window glares at her with distaste. The wind whips her waterlogged hair through the air and plasters it to her face. The shutters slam against the wall. And on the other side of the window, there’s a person in her kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best? There should be more? I'm not sure what to say here but this prompt generator (https://thestoryshack.com/tools/writing-prompt-generator/) is what's been keeping me writing. SENTIENT HOUSE RIGHTS???? Where the HELL did that one come from, making me have feelings about literal things?
> 
> If you like it, please say so!


	2. Mud Is A Horse, This Girl Is Asleep, The Floorboards Are Silent, And The House Does Not Creak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her eyes are wide and a soft pale blue. Her face is more freckle than skin. Long red hair drips from her scalp towards the floor. She’d be pretty if she was human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me @ myself: 600 words a chapter! Good rhythm!  
> Myself @ me: You mean like 700 right
> 
> I know no one cares about this story but I'm having a lot of fun writing it! Updates WILL happen, this story IS being worked on, again I know no one really cares but I DO so whatever.

The color drains from her face faster than the rain can fall. The torrential downpour seems minute compared to what’s in front of her. Past the shutters and the window and the silk-soft drapes, there’s a person standing in Akallie’s house. A person where there _should not be one_.

Akallie has a moment to blink before the mud underneath her feet smells her fear like a horse and shrieks. Dirt is calm, and water can be calmed, but together they are frenetic. _Out, out!_ It cries. _We do not need your fear!_ For how long the dirt and water have lived, Akallie understands, they’ve enough fear to go around themselves. Together it must be a nightmare.

The mud wants her to leave, to stop spilling fear and shock and confusion, and Akallie trusts the mud more than water and dirt alone. Where dirt likes to watch and water likes to listen, mud likes to speak and warn and lives to be heard. She knows the mud, it runs thick in her blood, and it wants her to leave so she runs, skids the perimeter of her house, jumps the front stairs, and slams open the door.

The door doesn’t make a sound as it hits the wall. The wood floor beneath her naked feet doesn’t so much as hiss as she tracks in a layer of sludge. The water budding on her skin reeks of anticipation. All around her, the house is quiet.

The silence is unnerving. No murmurs of hello, no angry barbs from an irritated floor or wall or stair. No dramatic screeches of two roulette objects touching when they would rather die. The glass of her front window didn’t even growl.

Akallie knows this sound. This is the sound of people, of hearts who overtake everything around them until the only noise left is their own making. This is the sound of humanity, who grunts and snarls and cries and screeches the world around them into submission. This is her sound. She hates it.

At the coat rack right of the door, there’s a hideskin jacket. It’s rough looking, a creased dark brown. Steerskin, probably. It’s silent, not even the slightest noise, and it’s clearly intentional. It has secrets to spill, and it’s staying quiet.

Akallie grabs the coat, beads of water still dripping off it and her, and goes for the closet by the stairs. She spends a second opening the door and grabbing what she needs before she walks towards the kitchen. She doesn’t bother to close the door. The door doesn’t bother to protest.

She reaches the kitchen entryway. The kettle, at least, is making noise. There’s humming coming from the other side. Akallie tightens her grip and walks in axe raised.

“What are you doing in my house?” Akallie asks, voice deep as the marianas trench and quiet enough to sound soothing if you ignored the waves of threat. From the window, the person jumps and whirls around.

Her eyes are wide and a soft pale blue. Her face is more freckle than skin. Long red hair drips from her scalp towards the floor. She’d be pretty if she was human, but her ears are too long and floppy and before she’d turned Akallie had spotted a tail. The hideskin jacket makes a little more sense now. Not a cow, with the point to the ears.

“Am I going to need spurs to get you out of here, pooka?” Akallie lowers the axe a bit and eyes the girl warily. Pookas can come both ways and Akallie doesn’t want or need anymore trouble. Trouble doesn’t seem like this one, though. The girl’s eyes are wide and alert but her ears and tail are drooping. She looks tired.

“I knocked,” she said quickly. “I swear on my herd I knocked and knocked but the door was open so I thought no one was home.” Her face goes worried.

“That’s how it works, right? Open doors mean open access?” Akallie sighs but doesn’t bother to correct the girl and looks to the clanging kettle. It grins, smug like it knows what’s about to happen. It probably does.

Akallie could probably drag the girl out without much fight, but she looks so waterlogged and lost that Akallie just rolls her eyes and says, “There’s a room down the hall. Be out by midmorning.”

The next day, the girl makes Akallie the best cup of coffee she’s ever had, and Akallie stops living alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I used a really nifty prompt generator (https://thestoryshack.com/tools/writing-prompt-generator/) for this story and am now proceeding not to follow it at all! Whoops!
> 
> (please love me)


End file.
